Rust Belt communities including Pittsburgh, Pa., are proactively looking to have migrants move to their cities and towns, many of which are facing a continued exodus of workers and a fall in populations.
“Whatever the sentiments about irregular immigration, there is bipartisan agreement that Southwestern Pennsylvania needs to figure out a way to attract new residents, and fast,” writes Tim Craig in the Washington Post in a Dec. 8 article, “Some states spurn migrants. The Rust Belt wants them.”
“We are not here to reject any immigration. As a matter of fact, we want to make this the most safe, welcoming, thriving place in America, and you can’t do that without immigration,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey (D) told Craig. The mayor does not make distinctions on the basis of someone’s immigration status or how the person entered the country. “Why wouldn’t we want them?”
Craig reports that in recent months, communities including Detroit; Dayton, Ohio; and Erie, Penn. “— all places experiencing population loss — have been working with outside experts on how to transform city services to meet the needs of immigrants. One city, Topeka, Kan., is being even more aggressive, offering legal migrants up to $15,000 to move there.”
Craig notes in his story that “immigrants remain the one demographic group that is keeping Pittsburgh from bleeding even more population, the American Immigration Council (AIC) concluded in a September report.”
The report found that Pittsburgh’s population dropped by 1.3 percent from 2014 to 2019. “The decline would have been more than double, 2.7 percent, without immigrants moving to the city. Immigrants constitute 9 percent of Pittsburgh’s population of 303,000, the report noted,” Craig wrote.
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 